Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo Tie for Last Place at E3

Paul Tassi
, ContributorNews and opinion about video games, technology and the internetOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Nintendo has just wrapped up their surprisingly short keynote address, and now the internet will be set aflame debating who won, and lost at E3 2012

If you can't tell by the above title, it's hard for me to say anyone actually did win, when all members of the "big three" put up pretty dismal performances across the board. Someone may have been the "least worst" (that would be Sony, in my opinion), but that's far from anyone actually outright "winning" by far and away putting on the best keynote of the show. There was an almost palpable lack of enthusiasm from any of them, with Sony and Microsoft understanding that this is the last year to plug their now ancient consoles, and Nintendo failing to make a splash with any huge announcements for the WiiU, which comes out this holiday. In short, there were almost no big surprises from any camp.

We'll go through in chronological order why exactly each brand failed to perform, but also highlighting what they did do right this year.

Microsoft

The Xbox stepped up to the plate first, and grounded out down the third base line. They opened strong with what was very obviously their best offering, Halo 4, which looked pretty damn cool to any fan, and impressed even a few that are normally firmly entrenched in other camps.

Outside of Halo however, Microsoft then proceeded to remind us that the state of their exclusive line-up is...relatively weak. Fable was once a promising series for the brand, but has now been relegated to Kinect nonsense. There were hints a few other exclusives with little else said about them ("Lococycle?") and the new Gears of War was given a few seconds for what could barely be called a teaser trailer.

The "big close" was someone on stage playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for about twenty minutes, and even if there was anything mind-blowing shown (there wasn't), it's not an exclusive title. However, Xbox does like to brag that they get all the DLC a month early.

On the hardware side, the big focus was "Smart Glass," a system that connects your tablets and smartphones to your Xbox for...what reason exactly? The idea is that it can provide "bonus content" during movies and TV shows, which will satisfy anyone looking to be distracted during what should already be a leisure activity, but more importantly, a tablet can be infused with in-game uses which draws very obvious comparisons to the WiiU.

But is it actually a competitor? Not really. Tablets costs hundreds of dollars by themselves, and in this instance they are not doubling as a controller the way the WiiU gamepad does. That means you have to grow an extra pair of arms to use both an Xbox controller and a tablet at the same time, or situate it awkwardly on your lap or a table.

The big news was the non-news that they wouldn't even be hinting at a new console this year, as apparently they signed some sort of blood pact with Sony to surrender the show to Nintendo, and not announce anything of importance. I remember when consoles used to be hyped for years, but now if a new system is announced next year, as must be the case, it should only be six months or so ahead of the system's release for holiday 2013, which is assuredly what both Sony and Microsoft are shooting for.